what can i say, other than i loved your videos so much i made a track that i thought suited the themes you have going on. There is something really charming about your work that left me quite inspired

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq4tK9fRElI

this is my tribute to your videos Vicki! Great work

I quote one of the reviews above because it is helpful and informative without being pretentious or smug, unlike all the others. "An enjoyable short film which mixes animation and film footage. Not very long." And that's what it is. It's not a masterpiece, and to be honest it's not really my thing. But I'm not going to spend several hundred words attacking what is obviously a short film made (I guess) reasonably quickly with simple and well achieved aims, by lumbering it with a load of false meanings and then attacking them one by one. If the people who so readily give their negative, pompous and ill informed opinions on art actually tried to make something once in a while they might respond differently. Just a thought...

I'm not a big fan of "art" that takes more length of time to explain what it is than the actual amount of time it takes to view the piece and process for yourself an interpertation. This movies detailed description pretty much sums up how I feel about it.

Couldn't disagree with the first reviewer more, who seems to be applying all manner of inappropriate rules and then complaining that they're not met. I doubt VB prayed five times a day to Mecca during the making of this piece, but so what?

Like all good surrealism, the sequences of images catch like burrs on the fabric of comfortable reality and pulls it into uneven new shapes. Self-referential, non-didactic and pleasingly playful, Resemblage is delightfully short - so much so that it's worth watching it a few times in a row. There are things afoot, but you've got to fiddle with your perceptual tuning knob a bit to get the message through the sulphur-scented static.

As with PLU's previous work, there's a playful but not entirely flippant consciousness here, speaking in a language that's simultaneously more and less familiar than it looks. Creativity, context, control and chaos are interwoven in a compelling and slightly sinister way - in one of the more captivating sequences, an intensely fluid orchestral conductor whips up a storm (with a truly appalling visual pun that can only be applauded) that mutates to an ominously flickering bright light behind what might be a distant city, but which then transforms by being observed into a celestial journey with echoes of 2001's Stargate sequence.

Do we control our thoughts, our creations, or surrender to them? It's not a bad question, and it runs through Resemblage like raindrops down a car window. And it's all topped off with that trademark PLU sheen of true psychedelia - refreshing the palate like a sliver of ginger between the indigestible lumps of media stodge we get served up by way of culture these days. Oh, and Satie gets blown up at the end.

Ya can't complain.

These collaged pieces aren't really film, and really don't extend the definition of film. They are conveniently collaged in a computer program and "recontextualized." But they are nothing more than an aesthete's failed attempt at creating something purportedly important or relevant.

Bennett's employ of the films she has used is nothing more than arbitrary, or at best, an homage to works she loves. Kind of like a Kiss cover band who may slightly rearrange Black Diamond. She claims that her work is surreal, yet her work isn't automatic and isn't wholly guided by her subconscious. Indeed, this a common misperception of many "artists" working today, who, if they feel their work has an element or two reminiscent of any surrealist, claims their work as being such. As well, she claims her work is dada, and for many the same or similar reasons it is not that either. What it is is a good instance of the incredible lameness of postmodernism, or the depthless outer crusts of deconstruction--obvious rearrangements of pre-existing elements.

It's been said that Bennett has claimed that the Americans have no idea how much Europeans have to talk crap to get funding for their work. Well, at least they have that option. But it's another thing entirely when the "artist" begins to believe the crap they speak about their own work.

Bennett also does not credit those who do her publicity writing for her. It seems that she'll credit when she's damn good a ready to, or when it suits her convenience.

So, in a nutshell, her work is little more than playful plagiarism, and because of its regrettable open-endedness (ahem), it is open to many interpretations; many of which are far too forgiving. I think the institutions who actually fund this work should rethink why they are giving money to a con-artist. This is not film.

Quite different from other works by Vicki Bennett of People Like Us, Resemblage is a film which leaves its interpretation more open as opposed to her past, more narratively oriented works. This film also has a slightly darker feel to it, until the ending which brings you back to her humorous antics.

an enjoyable short film which mixes animation and film footage. not very long.